Queso—Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Café

Well, not much to add to this.  It's been a busy month and will be a busy weekend.  

Anyway, this makes a pretty good dip.

Queso

¾ cup powdered milk

1 tablespoon cornstarch

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon onion powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups water

8 ounces pepper jack cheese, shredded

1 can (4 oz) diced green chiles, optional

 

In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, combine the milk powder, cornstarch, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt.  Slowly stir in the water.

Bring to a gentle simmer for 1-2 minutes while stirring.

Reduce heat to low and gradually add the cheese, making sure it has melted completely before adding more.  Taste and add salt if needed.  Stir in green chiles, if desired.

Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust--Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Cafe

I have nothing but love for the sourdough bread I’ve been making for the past year.  It’s easy to make, very forgiving, as cheap as can be since it doesn’t require milk, eggs, oil, yeast, or sweetener, and tastes fabulous.  I can bake both loaves for us, or have an extra to take to a neighbor.  Send some home with my daughter-in-law.  Make cinnamon rolls or jalapeno-cheddar bread. 

Well, I don’t really appreciate the discard and feeding as much.  Because I can’t just throw the discard away, looking at all those calories and nutrition just going down the drain.  That would be wasteful. 

So I went looking for a few more recipes that use sourdough discard.  This pizza crust is a keeper.

Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust

3 cups flour

2 tablespoons Italian herbs

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup water

½ cup sourdough discard

In a medium bowl, combine flour, herbs, and salt.  In a separate bowl, combine the water and sourdough discard.  Stir the wet ingredients into the flour mixture until well combined.  The dough will be a little dry.

Cover the dough and let it sit on the counter (or someplace where the temperature is 65-70°F) for 6-8 hours. 

Shape dough into a ball for a single large pizza, or into 2 balls for medium-sized pizzas.  Let the dough rest while the pans are being prepared.

Cover the baking sheet with parchment paper or spray with oil.  If using cast iron or a pizza stone, preheat it in the oven.  Roll out each ball to ¼” thick.  Prick the dough with a fork or dimple it with fingertips to prevent puffing up. 

Place the pizza dough on the prepared sheets.  Let rise until doubled for a thick crust (about 2 hours), or immediately put it in the over for thin crust pizza.  Bake at 425°F for 10 minutes, or until lightly browned. 

Remove pizza crust from oven and add toppings—sauce, cheese, and other toppings. 

Return to the oven and place under broil to heat the toppings and melt the cheese, about 5-10 minutes.  Remove when the cheese appears perfectly melted. 

Let cool for at least 5 minutes. 

Notes.  Using whole grains will increase the rising time.  So will cool temperatures. 

Family reviews:  This recipe makes a great thin-crust pizza.  It’s got that bit of sour and it’s crispy.  In this household, however, we are in the medium- to thick-crust camp.  We like the bread as much as the toppings.  Buttercup still makes the best pizza crust with the bucket bread recipe posted here a few years back.

Links to related posts:

Three Perfect Ingredients --Sourdough Bread

How to Use Sourdough Discard in Your Recipes  

Pizza Sauce

Whole Wheat No Knead Bucket Bread  

Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls  

Jalapeno-Cheddar Sourdough Bread  

 

The Danger of Lists

Many preparedness writers (actually maybe it’s everywhere now) default to making long lists because they can’t write much of substance.  I figure they don’t want to do the research.  Or maybe they’re trying to squeeze in a lot of items you can buy through their Amazon affiliate program.  Or perhaps it’s because they lack the ability to organize their thoughts coherently.  I’d love to deconstruct an article I read a year or so ago on the __Preparedness Uses of Sugar (number hidden to avoid too publicly embarrassing the author).  Had the author organized his thoughts instead of penning a rapid brain dump (it was called pre-writing when I went to school), he would have seen that instead of the Very Large Number he claimed, it was actually a much smaller number, and he was just repeating himself numerous times.  It would have been easier for his audience to see this as well. 

In addition, because these puff pieces lack supporting research, the little information provided can be misleading if not dangerous.  It’s critical to conduct your own research, and that includes anything you read here as well.  In a list of 35 over-the-counter medications to store, the same previously mentioned author indicated that he only stored 91% rubbing alcohol, and that was for disinfecting as well.  Unfortunately, 91% does not disinfect as well as 70% (because 91% evaporates more quickly—too quickly to kill pathogens).  So unless that author is planning to do the math to calculate exactly how much water to add to the 91% alcohol to yield 70% alcohol, he’s putting himself and his family at risk.  Along those same lines, potassium iodide (for protection from radioactive iodide) is great to have, but if you don’t know who needs it, how much, and when, what good will it be?

Back to the sugar article.  Included in that list were several suggestions that would be a complete waste of a relatively valuable product.  While sugar has been relatively inexpensive for at least the last 50 years, such was not the case historically.  And in any kind of collapse event, sugar will be costly again.  It will not be used to make homemade glue (lots of other ways to do this), candles (seriously?), burned for fuel, used for fertilizing plants, or perhaps worst of all, making a facial scrub.  People read that they can use sugar to make alcohol, a facial scrub, or glue, and don’t think much about it.  Alcohol may indeed be a good use for sugar, but a facial scrub or glue? 

Historically, sugar was such a valuable commodity that it comprised part of the slave trade.  When inflation really hits and supply chain disruption become even more real, sugar is going to skyrocket well beyond a dollar per pound.  It’s not going to be frittered away on a facial scrub. 

And what good is such an article if there are no links?  In the course of his own research, the reader then finds that the writer didn’t research well, is smoking something serious, or sometimes, just making stuff up.  Among critical thinkers, such poorly researched articles destroy the author’s credibility.  Those who failed to conduct their own research will find themselves rudely awakened.

Don’t let lists substitute for critical thinking.

Of course, most of us require lists.  I’ve even got quite a few lists on this blog.  They’re a quick check to make sure you’ve got the essentials, because while trying to remember it all when you were younger may have worked, it likely won’t work when older. (I know it’s not working for me anymore.)  The danger lies in not going beyond the lists, a far too common occurrence. Lists on this blog should have full articles devoted to most of the items in the lists, and if it was a really good article, links to the items on the list.  Except for the really long articles.  But searching in the search box should provide an answer. 

So yes, use lists to check and double check everything.  But don’t stop there.  Make sure you can do everything you need to do and know how to use your supplies to produce the desired results.  So you won’t be merely surviving, but truly thriving.

And finally, a shout-out to the other preparedness writers reading this article:  Cut back on the 5-12-48 Things You Forgot to Store/Preparedness Uses for Duct Tape/Herbs to Forage, and start writing articles with substance, perhaps some practical how-tos.  You’ll learn in the process as well, help others along their preparedness journey, and become better prepared yourself.

Links to related posts:

Survivalists v. Preppers 

Elephants in the Room  

Roseola—Reason for Concern?

Like many of the illnesses covered here, I recall reading bits and pieces over the years.  Unless I had some personal experience with them, I didn’t remember much else.  Roseola is one of those that I recall seeing in lists of childhood illnesses.  Is it as troublesome as impetigo?  As contagious?  Merely annoying?  Can there be complications?  Surely there had to be some reason why it made those lists, but heck if I could remember.

And of all the primary off-grid medical references, only Armageddon Medicine had any mention.  One simple sentence.  I’d prefer to have a little more information.

So why be concerned with having more details?  I think it is easy for experienced parents to look at childhood illnesses now and say, “Hey, if this bug doesn’t pass in a day or two or three, I’ll take Little Johnny to the doctor.”  Because the doctor is always there as backup if things take a turn for the worse.  But what if there is no backup?  Or what if there is a backup, but it’s expensive?  Or hard to get to?  Like most of our concerns with health issues are worse at night and on weekends.  When things fall apart and when it comes to illnesses in our loved ones, in our minds it’s always going to be at night or on a weekend.  Probably a holiday weekend at that. 

So while roseola is a very minor illness that will pass without issue (and why it receives no coverage in off-grid medicine texts), it’s one to become familiar with to avoid the Friday night freak-out session.  Just because a doctor isn’t concern about it doesn’t mean we won’t be.  Until we know about it.  Knowledge is power.

The inspiration for this article comes from the Quick Guide to Common Childhood Diseases (thanks again to Exile for the recommendation).

Roseola is a common childhood illness affecting primarily children between 6 and 24 months of age.  While it very rarely affects children after 4 years of age, that doesn’t mean they and older persons can’t carry the virus.  They are the vectors carrying the virus to the babies through nose and throat secretions—breathing in the airborne droplets carrying the virus.  The incubation period ranges from 5 to 15 days, and it’s believed that the patient is most contagious during the fever period, before the rash appears.  The exact duration of infectiousness is not known. 

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS

• Fever (sometimes over 103°F) that appears suddenly and lasts 3-5 days.  A febrile seizure may occur due to the rapid rise in temperature.
• Swelling of the eyelids is possible
• Pink, rosy rash usually develops as the fever resolves.  The rash first develops on the neck and chest and then spreads to the rest of the body.  The rash spots turn white when gently pressed.  They may have a lighter color ring around them, and the rash generally lasts a few hours up to two days.
• Irritability
• Diarrhea and vomiting
• Swollen neck glands

TREATMENT

There are no specific recommendations for treatment, though Tylenol or ibuprofen may be administered for fever.  Rest, plenty of fluids, and a cool cloth to the forehead are about it.[1] 

---

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/roseola/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20377289

Poor Man's Medicine

Here I go again with some random thoughts swirling around in my brain this morning.  Comments from Exile and Melanie on the “Elections and the Supply and Demand for Food” got me thinking a little.  They posited that the reason why I didn’t see the increased traffic and demand at the Home Storage Centers this election cycle compared to the previous four was that people can’t afford it now.  Could it be that the wealthiest nation on earth, and in the history of the world, is becoming poorer?

And is this necessarily a bad thing?  (OK, hear me out.)

As you might recall, my husband was laid off in August.  And a week after that, I developed an ulcer.  I don’t think I would have gone to the doctor for it, even if he hadn’t been unemployed and we’d had insurance.  But without insurance, DIYing treatment with herbs was a no-brainer.  Have I been better off because I didn’t take the pills which could have caused unwanted side effects?  I’ll never know, but I can guess that in this situation I am healthier for being (hopefully momentarily) poor.

I grew up with the notion that the wealthy were healthier because they could afford better care.  If insurance didn’t cover an illness or procedure, they could pay out-of-pocket for all the expenses.  The poor didn’t have that luxury.  TV ads requesting donations for the poor in Africa remind us of that today. 

Dr. Steve first prompted my questioning the notion of the wealthy being healthier in his classes many years ago.  He related how in Victorian England, the wealthy would have their wound bandages changed daily, because they could afford it.  The poor could not afford that luxury, so their bandages were changed only 2-3 times per week.  How was it that the wounds of the poor healed faster?  Well, the newly formed tissues weren’t being disturbed, for one.  Being poor meant they were actually getting better care in this situation.

In one conversation this past summer, my son Jared shared garlic’s historical reputation for being an undesirable food, with some even claiming it was unhealthy.  It was actually a common food not fit for the wealthy because anybody could grow it.  Garlic and onions were peasant food.  And yet, they have so many medicinal uses.  And they make our food taste good.

So many of Grandma’s home remedies were stinky or tasted bad.  That usnea tincture for my ulcer was a horrific assault on the taste buds.  And the image that Big Pharma promoted and that our media supported, was that if you were using grandma’s remedies, you were probably poor.  Only the wealthy could call for a doctor.

In that same conversation with Jared, he noted that dandelions were brought to this continent by the colonials because it grew so well and was so nutritious.  What do the wealthy do today?  They use herbicides to eradicate dandelions, as well as plantain and mallow, from their lawns.  Only poor people have dandelions spoiling their grass.   

When Nestle corporation in the US began its big push selling baby formula in the 1940s and 1950s, which women were the first to start buying it?  The middle and upper classes.  Only the low-class and immigrants continued to breast feed their babies.

In Eggs or Anarchy, we read how Lord Woolton, Minister of Food in Great Britain during WWII, fed the country and helped them become healthier in the process.  What were they eating?  Whole grains.  Peasant food.  The cheap stuff.  Because when societies collapse, it’s the cheap stuff that sustains. 

And this then again begs the question, are the wealthy actually healthier?  Are there changes we can make in our attitudes to become healthier? 

When society collapses and when our carefully stockpiled Big Pharma medications run out, we’re going to be relegated to using herbs.  Will it be a blessing for us?  Will we be healthier?  Will we be able to stop or arrest illnesses because we can start using our home-prepared remedies immediately, without having to wait to see a doctor?  Without bankrupting ourselves?  (Which then gives rise to more stress and illness?)

And then when you think of all the medicinal herbs surrounding us, and especially the invasive ones that exert so many medicinal benefits and are free for the taking, like the scotch thistle and chicory I just wrote about, you have to wonder if maybe God wants us to be humble, to be teachable, to utilize medicinal herbs and nutritious food more and to look to Him for guidance.  Perhaps having a bit of financial struggle in life is a path to bringing us closer to Him. 

Links to related posts:

Eggs or Anarchy 

Medicinal Uses of Chicory

Medicinal Uses of Scotch Thistle